Mercedes drivers don’t understand sudden lack of pace
Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were at a loss for words after last Sunday’s Grand Prix, with particularly the two-time F1 race winner suffering from high tyre degradation at Zandvoort.
On the back of a string of strong races, Mercedes endured very different fortunes at last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, having been unable to join the contest for top places,
The German-British outfit won three of four races before the summer break, and looked strong in the practice session at Zandvoort as well. However, Lewis Hamilton was knocked out in Q2 while George Russell ended up only fourth, six tenths of a second behind pole-sitter Lando Norris.
In the 72-lap race, Hamilton managed to fight his way up the order to finish P8, but his team-mate was unable to keep himself in the fight for a podium place as Mercedes looked slower than Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari.
Following his issues in qualifying, Hamilton was always going to face a tough race at Zandvoort, but a string of brave overtaking moves saw the seven-time world champion work his way up the field.
"We knew today was all about damage limitation. We managed to work our way back into the points but ultimately, we didn’t have the pace to fight for much more today. If we had qualified better yesterday, than it may have been a little different.
“Ienjoyed getting past several cars though and putting the Soft tyre to use in that opening stint. It felt good to move forwards but I’m a little disappointed as if we had a better Saturday, then the fight would have been for more points.
"Strategy wise, we were looking at running to the end on the one-stop. I had a lock-up on the Hard tyre though and that meant we switched to the two-stop. It was a shame to lose the point for fastest lap at the end, but I should have put in a quicker effort earlier on."
His team-mate George Russell had expected to fight for the win, but unexpectedly high tyre wear meant that he was unable to keep the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz behind.
"Today’s race was an odd one. We didn’t have the pace and that was the case on all three tyre compounds. It felt that I was sliding around quite a lot, suffering from high degradation, and slowly went backwards.
“We will have to understand why that was as we were relatively quick on Saturday. Performance does swing circuit to circuit, but we have been up near the front in the past six races. I am therefore confident that this is an outlier.
"We will get to work immediately to understand why we were slower than our competitors today. We have another race next weekend in Monza and we will aim to put in a much better showing there."
